Project Scooby

The Quest for the World's Greatest Sandwich

Somewhere, as it sluices like a concrete river through the
hard-baked, sun-bleached plain of the Nevada desert, there's a dust trail that leaves the
highway and heads off apparently to nowhere.

Or at least, that's what we've been
told. As we shudder to a halt at the side of the road and wait for the dust to die
down so we might see where the hell we are, we're beginning to wonder if it exists at all.

We're slowly cooking in a 1974 pickup that looks like it might have
enjoyed a previous existence as something roadworthy. Our driver is also our guide.
Randy 'Peanuts' Murphy has lived in this neighbourhood for over sixty years and -
according to the people who recommended him to us - he knows this land like the back of
his hand.

When we heard about a secret complex, hidden somewhere in the foothills of
the Rocky Mountains, Peanuts seemed like the perfect man to accompany us. Now, as we
sit alongside the rank old coot 'somewhere' along the bleached white spine of the highway,
we are starting to wonder if we've made the right decision.

A barbed wire boot for the unwary traveller

"Thing is, the desert is a bitch," Peanuts tells us,
with the confident, lazy drawl of a man accustomed to talking crap for the benefit of
tourists.

He's staring out through the dirt-blasted windshield, scanning what the
distant heat haze allows him to see of the horizon. He's got a pensive look on his
face, but we realise he's probably just concentrating on dislodging part of this morning's
breakfast from beneath his false palate.

"Yup," he continues, and
flicks his hand in an indolent gesture as he rests it on the steering wheel, "she
sure is a harsh and unforgiving mistress."

"Okay," we say.

"She's a cruel and wanton trickster," Peanuts
elaborates. He jerks his head around and hurls a big gob of spit at the
adjacent window. The window happens to be wound up, but he doesn't seem the
slightest bit perturbed by the viscous globule of sputum as it slowly slides down the
glass.

"A sly old devil dog. A barbed wire boot for the unwary traveller.
She's a rancid, petulant wheelbarrow of death for the moribund adventurer. Oh yes,
sirree."

"Great," we say. "So, where are we?"

"We're lodged in the very heart of her evil bosom,"
Peanuts says unhelpfully. "Caught up in her web of fear. I've seen the
desert kill a man - it sure ain't pretty."

"Fantastic," we say, becoming impatient now.
"So what you're trying to tell us is ...?"

The gob on the window behind him has started to move upwards

"Listen boys," Peanuts says, and he turns and fixes
us with a cold, yellow-eyed glare. His lined, weather-beaten face seems as old as
the desert, and each crease and wrinkle speaks of a lifetime of wisdom.

Slightly more alarmingly, we notice that the gob on the window behind him has
started to move upwards.

"Listen real good," he says again. "I've been
living on this land all my life. Man and boy. In sickness and in health.
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. Don't you think if I'd could find my way about, I would
have shipped out years ago?"

He makes a good point, and he knows it. Without the need to
elaborate, he guns the engine and we're off again, in search of our mysterious isolated
facility. Peanuts has never seen the place himself, but he knows many people who have.

"Most folks round here know about it," he tells us, and
his voice could almost be described as portentous. "It's the place where
they're making The Sandwich."

Siffing around his Oval Office

According to our source back in London, who claims to have seen the
paperwork, somewhere out here is a top secret research facility dedicated to the design
and construction of the world's greatest sandwich.

Project Scooby - named in honour of the
sandwich-loving cartoon dog - was initiated back in 1979 when the then President, Jimmy
Carter, feeling a little peckish, turned to a couple of his aides who were sniffing around
his Oval Office and said, 'Hey guys, if you're stuck for something to do, why don't you go
fix me a bite to eat?"

And so Project Scooby was born.

Originally funded wholly by
the American Government, the project initially boasted a team of six government
nutritionists and was housed in a small rented office above a dentist's in Philadelphia.

From such humble beginnings the undertaking has grown to accommodate several
international partners - both government bodies and private companies.

The scope of
the project has increased also. From rustling up a bite to eat for Jimmy Carter, the
current aim of Project Scooby is to design the ultimate 'super sandwich'. A sandwich
to be both feared and admired by people all over the planet. A sandwich that could,
if properly handled, dominate the world. They've been working on it for over 20
years and now, if our information is correct, they might at last be nearing completion.
One day soon, President Carter may finally get his lunch.

Frilly shirts and the make up and the big hair

When the facility in Nevada first came into use is a matter for
speculation. Peanuts Murphy seems to think that Project Scooby first came here in
the mid-eighties.

"Oh sure, yes," he recalls. "The summer
of 1984, I remember it like it was yesterday. Boy George, Phil Collins, Tears For
Fears. All the kids were into the frilly shirts and the make up and the big hair.
It was fucking gruesome. The Chorlton's boy was shot through the neck one
night after being mistaken for a fruit. Still, better safe than sorry."

"And what about the Project Scooby people?" we
prompt him.

"Oh no," he says. "They were far too
straight-laced for any of that Spandau Ballet crap. One or two of them may have been
a bit fruity, but they didn't let it show."

Peanuts pauses to dislodge a couple
of cockroaches from his ear.

"There was a lot of construction traffic coming
through town at that time. That's when we first began to get wind of something going
off in the mountains. A lot of bigwigs about as well - military and scientific
types. They used long words and frightened our womenfolk."

There's a long streak spreading upwards on the glass, marking the ungainly passage of his expended
saliva

Peanuts stops the truck again and turns to us, a broad, gleaming
grin cracking his gnarled face.

"Well hey boys, whaddya know?" he
says, and gestures over his shoulder. We look at the window behind him, slightly
nonplussed. There's a long streak spreading upwards on the glass, marking the
ungainly passage of his expended saliva, but no sign of the actual gob itself. We
start to worry. It could be anywhere.

Then we notice the real object of his
triumph. Clearly visible, etched into the dry dust stretching across the desert to
the distant mountains is a well-travelled dirt track.

"I told you we'd find it," Peanuts says, then he
swings the wheel around sharply and we dive off the highway. We rattle down a small
bank and then, all of a sudden, we're bouncing across the uneven track, shaken this way
and that as the truck crunches up the rocks in its path.

This is the real desert now. We've left the comfort and
convenience of metalled roads and are thundering across bare naked earth. It's a
wild, desolate place, and Peanut's earlier mental utterances come back to us.

We
begin to see that the desert really could kill a man. Kill him, bury him and stand
laughing over his unmarked grave. This is home only to the very hardiest of men, and
the fiercest most tenacious of God's creatures. In the distance we can see herds of
long-toothed sand pigs, foraging amongst the dry earth for prairie oysters and buffalo
worms. Above us we hear the cries of the circling mountain ducks. They follow
in our wake, like seagulls following a trawler.

Distant mountains

The trail seems to go on forever, snaking this way and that as it
heads towards the distant mountains, but those mountains never seem to get any closer.
It's as if they're running away from us as fast as we run towards them.

After
a while, doubt begins to sink in. Perhaps we're following the wrong trail?
Perhaps this track leads nowhere? Or perhaps it leads to some completely different
secret research facility - perhaps one investigating UFOs or stealth weaponry...?

Of course, although Project Scooby has never been
officially been recognised it has still attracted its fair share of attention from both
the media and certain outspoken individuals. Amongst them are a large number of
nutritionists, sandwichologists and bun specialists who have been most critical of the
attempt.

Such a 'super sandwich' could not possibly exist, they claim. Nobody
has yet baked a loaf with the tensile strength to take the strain. And whilst the
adhesive properties of many industrial grade margarines are impressive, there isn't a
single brand that would be able to maintain structural cohesion in the event of crust
slippage or wheat germ decay.

Perhaps then, this is just some wild goose chase? Perhaps
Project Scooby is just a pipe dream, a modern-day fairy story - unfeasible, untenable,
impossible? Just as we begin to think we've made a terrible mistake, we pass an empty
tanker of mayonnaise coming in the opposite direction, and we are reassured that we must
be on the right path.

He clearly saw a giant vat marked with the words 'French Mustard'

The Nevada facility first came to our attention when we heard a
report from amateur pilot Christian Pyle. Pyle was out one morning, practising
three-point turns in his private plane, when he passed over some kind of industrial
complex hidden in the mountains.

On first glimpsing it, he noted what appeared to be
a large central warehouse or hangar, surrounded by a network of smaller buildings.
Banking sharply, he flew over the site again. This time he clearly saw a giant vat
marked with the words 'French Mustard', and also several large fields of cress.

Since then, a number of more detailed reports have reached us from
people who have been able to slip through the tight security cordon that surrounds the
site. We have learned that the large hangar that Pyle saw from the air is where the
sandwich - officially titled Scoob 1 - is being constructed.

Scoob 1 currently
measures over thirty feet high, but new levels are being added all the time. A
complicated network of pipes constantly feeds barbecue sauce to the sandwich, pumped
directly from a highly classified supply facility off the Pacific coast. This is the
very lifeblood of the project, without which Scoob 1 would simply whither and
die.

Daily parachute drops of gherkins

Project Scooby, as you might expect, requires an uninterrupted influx of
ingredients. As well as a steady stream of trucks and tankers visiting the site,
they also receive daily parachute drops of gherkins.

Witnesses have testified to the
huge stockpiles of sandwich components that are stored at the facility, including giant
mile-long salamis, row upon row of huge Edam 'boulders' and an artificial lake of salad
cream, on which employees can go water-skiing during their time off.

There is also,
apparently, a hidden 'chilli cavern', which is highly restricted and can only be accessed
in times of dire emergency - and then only when the employee is wearing a full radiation
suit.

It's no mean feat, transporting all these supplies and all this
equipment to such a remote spot. But there may be a very good reason why this
location was chosen. Not only is it away from the prying eyes of rival sandwich
constructors, but there is also rumoured to be large deposits of naturally occurring
pepperoni in these mountains.

And a careful study of maps dating back some hundred years
or more reveals that at the beginning of the twentieth century, prospectors discovered
rich seams of Chinese Chicken.

We spot the occasional spurt from one of the ketchup geysers

As we draw ever closer, we can almost smell the pickles. The
track sweeps in a broad arc around the foothills. The desert rises up around us as
the mountains begin to grow. For the first time we see a tantalising glimpse of the
facility - in the distance, nestling between far away outcrops we spot the top of a crane,
a radio mast and the occasional spurt from one of the ketchup geysers.

Our sense of
excitement builds as we anticipate the buzz of activity that lies ahead of us - engineers
turning cucumbers on lathes, riveting tomatoes or smelting onions.

But our hearts sink when we start to see the warning signs at the
side of the track. "NO VISITORS", "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY",
"TRESPASSERS WILL BE CLAMPED" and "NO PICNICS". Then we come to
the checkpoint. Peanuts slows the truck to a halt as an armed guard steps forward.

And our journey is at an end. No amount of blagging, pleading,
bribery or coercion will persuade the young sentry to let us pass. With little other
choice, we turn the truck around and head on back.

Lumbago wolves howling in agony

Night is falling in the desert as we begin our tired,
bone-shaking journey back to the highway.

We hear the distant calls of the Lumbago
wolves, howling in agony. We're told that packs of Beatles come out at dusk to feed
on the herds of Monkees and the occasional Herman's Hermit, but we see no sign of
them.

Perhaps we're too lost in regret to notice them.

To have come all this
way and to be turned back at the last moment is bruising. To know that we will never get
to see teams of welders working on great sheets of ham, or watch lumberjacks felling giant
stalks in the forest of celery is a disappointment we can hardly bear.